


entanglement

by notcaycepollard



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Drift Compatibility, F/M, Slow Burn, The Drift (Pacific Rim), Trip Lives, adult Ace Peterson, except I guess I asked for it, here it is, implied Trip/Simmons, implied ot3: Hunter/Bobbi/Mack, jaeger Avengers are all I ever wanted, making science up, on tumblr, otp: quantum entanglement, pacific rim is absolutely a perfect film thank you, phil coulson: hearts for eyes, playing fast and loose with canon on both sides of the AU here, the pacific rim AU nobody asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2015-10-30
Packaged: 2018-04-28 22:06:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5107340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notcaycepollard/pseuds/notcaycepollard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>we drift inside each other (all we have is one another)</p>
            </blockquote>





	entanglement

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shortitude](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shortitude/gifts), [Persiflage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Persiflage/gifts), [nausicaa_of_phaeacia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nausicaa_of_phaeacia/gifts).



Coulson's plan is only ever to bring Skye in as a consultant. The Rising Tide is hacking their jaeger transmissions, picking up signals Coulson's team can hardly even read from their base, and Coulson needs to know how they're doing it. So he brings her in. He knows she's competent. She's one of the Rising Tide's best hackers. "Hacktivist," she snaps, "not hacker," and his lips curl up in a smile before he catches himself.

"Where am I?" she demands. "I'm in the secret Shatterdome, aren't I? The one you're not telling the public about? After the Battle of New York, I  _knew_ you'd build another base." _  
_

"It's classified," Coulson parries. "We just need your help. One of our pilots is missing." Skye tilts her head, looks at him evaluatively.

"Deathlok Centipede," she says. "Which pilot? Mike or Ace?"

"Mike," Coulson says. "Think you can help?" _  
_

"I'll need to see your data," she tells him, and he nods, passes her the tablet he's holding. "I'm not allowed out of this room, am I?"

"That depends," Coulson replies, deadpan, "on your help."

Skye finds Mike, tracks him down in the Drift data, pinpoints his location with eery accuracy. Coulson's never seen someone read and navigate Drift reports so quickly; the code isn't easy to follow at the best of times, fragmented and illogical, but Skye connects the tablet to her own laptop, lets her fingers fly across the keys, sinks into what looks like a fugue state as she interprets the data. He doesn't mean to watch her work, but he does, lets his eyes linger on her as she worries absently at her lower lip with her teeth, watches her makes a tiny little frown as she tries to interpret a particular cloud of code. Coulson's impressed. He wonders what she'd be like in the Drift itself.

"Penn Station," she says eventually. "Take Ace with you, he'll talk his father down. He didn't mean to go awol, Coulson, promise me you'll be-  _kind_."

"I'm always kind," Coulson tells her, and Skye just gives him a long, long look.

He knew she was good. He knew she was the best Drift hacker out there.

He didn't realize she'd look at him all challenging and perceptive, her jaw set, her hair long and soft and gleaming in the dim light, and under her gaze he feels stripped bare, flayed raw, feels like he's caught floating untethered in the Drift. Skye looks at him like she doesn't need to drift with him to be in his head. Coulson feels like he'd let her right in.

"Come with me," he says, impulsively, "come help me bring our pilot home, and- I'll show you what it's like."

"The Shatterdome?" Skye asks, and Coulson smiles.

"The Shatterdome. Deathlok Centipede. The Drift tech."  _How I can be kind_ , he doesn't say. "You want to know, to see what it's like, I can tell."

"Yeah," Skye says, considers him even more evaluatively. "I do."

Skye's face, when she finally sees the vastness of the base, is beautiful, Coulson thinks. She makes a noise, tiny and awed, when she sees Deathlok Centipede, reaches out as if to touch it. (It's too huge to touch, too huge to comprehend. Coulson remembers the first time he saw a jaeger. They're too big for the human brain to understand, he thinks.)

"You could join us," Coulson says, and what is it about Skye that's making him so impulsive, he wonders. "We have a place in the team, for a Drift data specialist." 

 

 +

 

"Phil," May says, and nothing else, but although it's been years since he drifted with her, he hears everything she doesn't say.

"She's a consultant," he says, "she's not going to pilot," and May raises one eyebrow, goes back to the LOCCENT controls.

"If you say so," she tells him, and Coulson feels the faintest echo of her disapproval. "Don't look at me like that," she adds, "we're not in Bahrain Cavalry anymore," but she's smiling as she says it, just a little.

"No," Coulson agrees, "we're not, but you'll always be my LOCCENT copilot, Melinda," and that makes her smile wider, careful but pleased.

 

+

 

Fitzsimmons, of course, welcome Skye into the team with wide, semi-manic grins. "Sorry about the, ugh, the  _entrails_ all over the place," Fitz tells Skye, "I try to get her to work with the holotable, but,  _biologists_ , what do you expect." Skye smiles, looks around the lab with obvious interest, pokes at something Coulson thinks she probably shouldn't be poking at, but Jemma just peels off her gloves and leans over.

"That's a sample of Chitauri biotech from the Battle of New York," she says with breathless pleasure, "we're analyzing it for xenoviruses, it's  _fascinating_ , actually." Skye withdraws her finger abruptly, wipes her hand on her jeans, and Coulson can't help but smirk.

"You can read Drift data, can't you?" Fitz says suddenly, rounding on Skye, and she looks taken aback.

"Uh, yeah, I... yeah. That's... kind of my thing, actually."

"Where did you train?"

"Self-taught," Skye says, with a defensiveness Coulson knows comes from dropping out of high school and facing questions like this constantly. He imagines it's hard enough already being a female Drift hacker ( _hacktivist_ , he hears her say), and slots that knowledge about her into place in his mental profile, because, he thinks, he wants to know everything about Skye. _  
_

"Simmons," he interrupts, "can you show Skye to her bunk?"

"Yes, sir," Jemma says, smiles at Skye, and Coulson can't just spend all day showing her around the base, but god, does he want to.

 

+ 

 

In the team mess, Skye looks overwhelmed, not sure who to sit with, but Mike and Ace wave at her, and Coulson's suddenly glad he's sitting at their table too.

"Skye! Come join us. Antoine Triplett, Trip, Skye," Jemma says, and Trip lifts his arm from where it's slung around Jemma's shoulders, shakes Skye's hand easily. 

"This is... I mean, wow," Skye says, sliding into a free seat. "I don't think I've seen food like this since before the first invasion."

"We grow it on base," Jemma tells her, passes her a dish of potatoes. "The garden's pretty much self-sufficient, now, and we've got enough stores for a couple years at least. No flour, though. I miss pancakes."

"Even if we  _had_ pancakes, there'd be no syrup," Fitz points out, and Coulson hides a secret grin, because Fitz isn't wrong. Even in the middle of an ongoing alien-god invasion, everyone misses sugar.

"You're just soft," Ward tells them, rolling his eyes. " _Civilians_."

"And that would be Specialist Grant Ward," Coulson tells Skye. "Not every mission needs a jaeger. Sometimes it needs boots on the ground. Ward, Skye, she's our new-"

"Consultant, yeah, I've heard. Just another civilian mouth to feed," Ward scowls, stands up and pushes his chair in abruptly. Skye's eyes widen, and she glances from Ward's retreating back to Coulson, looking shocked.

"Sorry about that," he says, feeling oddly protective of her. "He's an asshole. But a necessary one."

"Right," Skye says, still looking wary, and Coulson's grateful when Ace draws her into conversation, telling her cheerful, obvious lies about times they've met other jaeger pilots.

"Oh come on," Trip laughs. "That's such bullshit, and you know it."

"Hand to god," Ace says, "there I am in nothing but a towel, the building's about to explode, and Russian Arrow comes out of nowhere, smacks the Chitauri straight in the jaw. Dad didn't believe me either, but after that, heaven and earth couldn't stop me looking to pilot. Lucky we passed the Drift compatibility test, huh. We've always been a team, right?"

"Did you ever meet, uh, Iron Man?" Skye asks, and Ace and Mike share a smile. 

"Girl," Trip tells her, "don't tell me you're an Iron Man fangirl." 

"I grew up in New York, I can't help it," she protests, blushing, and Trip grins. 

"Tony's an ass," Coulson says confidentially. "But Pepper is great. A good foot taller than him, too, although you'd never know it from their promo posters."

"Well, what about Captain America?" Skye asks, leaning in, and the team start laughing. 

"Sam and Steve? The biggest, most famous superheroes of jaeger piloting? Oh sure, we hang out with those guys all the time."

"I met them," Coulson says. "Just once. In New York. Asked Steve to sign my trading cards." Everyone goes quiet, glancing at him a little sideways, and Skye gives him a curious look like she wants to hear more. It's a pity. He doesn't remember much more. 

 

+

 

Skye's  _observant_ , and it shouldn't surprise Coulson, but it does, every time.

"Why does everyone look at you so weirdly?" Skye asks, falling into step with him in the hall, and Coulson smiles.

"It's nothing," he says. "It's just, I died. In New York. The team's a bit weird about it."

"You  _died_?" Skye says, stares at him in disbelief.

"Eight seconds. But it felt like longer. I was a pilot, once. Mark III, Cobalt Fury. A good jaeger. Tesseract-powered, the only Mark III that ran on tess-tech. I died for eight seconds, spontaneous neural misconnection that nearly left my brain fried. My co-pilot got us out, but even if it was just for eight seconds, dying changed me. We're not drift compatible anymore." He shrugs philosophically. "Running this base is a pretty good substitute."

"You never tried to find someone else to drift with?" Skye asks, and Coulson looks away. It's not that he doesn't want to pilot. It's not even that he couldn't face another drift partner. It's... he's not sure what he'd find, in the blue light of the Drift. Is his death recorded there? Will it play his ghost story back to him, give him the memories he doesn't have of the days following? Would someone else get into his head, see the things he can't remember? He doesn't know how his death changed him. He doesn't know why he's a different person now. The Drift might answer that.

He doesn't know whether it'd be worse if it didn't.

"My drifting days are over," he evades, leaves Skye standing in the hallway. Even without looking back, he knows she's watching.

 

+

 

It takes Skye all of a month and an attack on Los Angeles that Deathlok Centipede barely comes out of before she walks into his office and asks to start training as a pilot. Coulson thinks immediately of May and her disapproval, but he doesn't say no.

"You can start with PT, build up your hand-to-hand, piloting takes a lot more physical strength than you'd expect, but, Skye," he says, pauses for a moment and evaluates her. "You don't even know if you'll find someone who's drift compatible."

"I know," Skye says, looking frustrated. "But I have to train anyway, Coulson, I have to at least  _try_."

He watches her, later, in the training room, and her punches are raw, untrained, but he can see the potential. He can see the way she could learn the smooth slide from kick to punch to roll to kick, sparring as easy as breathing, and he feels it under his skin. He wants to get back in the ring. He wants a sparring partner who'll anticipate every move, who'll fight with him like dancing. He can see it in the way she moves. He knows she'd get under his skin, too.

 

+

 

That night he dreams about the Drift, dreams tinted with cold blue. He dreams about his death, and it's not eight seconds. It's longer. It must be longer. It  _hurts_ , the woozy, sickening pain of neural misconnection, and he wakes up sweating and clammy, breathing hard.

The next day he's back in the gym too, training like he hasn't since New York (since he died) and although Skye looks at him quizzically, she doesn't say a word. She trains hard, keeps pace, and within another month he's hardly keeping pace with her.

"Drop your shoulder," he tells her, "your stance is off, drop your shoulder and turn," and she just nods, adjusts her posture and slides into it again. He wants to hand her a staff and match her move for move. He wants to touch her jaw just where it meets her neck, where her skin is gleaming with drops of sweat. He wants her in his head. He  _wants_.

 

+

 

The dream happens again and again, every month, then every week, then every night, until everyone's noticing his hands shake with exhaustion, his eyes red-rimmed. 

"Phil," May says, and she's concerned, he feels it.

"I'm fine," he parries, pulls himself together.

"Coulson," Skye says later, gentle, and she's concerned too, he feels  _that_ , and how, how does he feel it, they've never been linked. Her eyes are wide, soft, and she's looking him the way she did that first day, the way that makes him feel stripped bare. "Coulson, what do you need?"

"I need-" he says, pauses, because he knows what he needs, but to ask for it, that's terrifying. "I need to go into the Drift," he gets out, and Skye considers him for a moment, then nods.

"You need a drift partner," she tells him, and he's never even sparred with her, never felt the dancing shift of air between their bodies, but that doesn't mean they haven't been circling each other for months. She's practically in his head already. He knows it's her.

 

+

 

There are no spare jaegers for them, but Fitz has rigged a Drift sequence simulator, something that will create the neural bridge between the two of them without the giant metal mecha. Skye's never been through any of the usual pilot simulations. There isn't time. She's only trained for six months. It will have to do.

"Be careful," Jemma says, her voice betraying her nerves. "Skye, be  _careful_. You know about random access brain input triggers?"

"Don't chase the rabbit, yeah, yeah, I've got that much," Skye says. "Jemma. I'll be fine." She gives Coulson a careful look, ties her hair back. "Ready to step into my head, Coulson?"

"You'll know soon enough," Coulson replies, takes a deep breath and pulls his helmet on.

 _Neural handshake_   _initiated_ , the LOCCENT AI announces.  _Pilot to pilot neural bridge engaged._

He hasn't drifted in long enough that it's a physical shock when it happens, Skye sliding into him sliding into Skye sliding into each other, and he breathes into it reflexively. The're in the Drift and Coulson  _feels_  it, the cold blue light  _< the orphanage Skye crying> <no Coulson crying> <no Skye crying> _and he staggers, blinks into the images  _< his father's death Coulson crying < no Skye crying> <no Coulson crying>. _They're in the Drift and Coulson hasn't been in the Drift for so long, hasn't been in the Drift since he died  _< Loki attacks him attacks them attacks Cobalt Fury and the scepter breaks the Drift> <it's in his head>_ 

 _< he's gasping he's dying the pain makes him cold> <Skye feels it Coulson feels it he's dying> <it's not eight seconds it's not forty seconds it's>_ Skye shudders next to him in the suit and Coulson feels her body react like it's his own < _it's an eternity >._

_< he's drifting>_

_< they're Drifting>_

"I died," he says, and he doesn't know if it's out loud or in Skye's head. It doesn't matter.

"For a long time," she agrees, and he, they feel it, they feel the sting of it, the cold, the sudden awakening in Tahiti.

"Not Tahiti," he says, blinks again.  _< the operating room> <a machine> <pain> <he's dead> _

_< let me die>_

_< let me die>_

_< please let me die>_

He can't feel anything except it, it's heavy and dark and surrounding him and Skye is nowhere to be found, he doesn't know whether he's still in the Drift, he's stuck in this memory  _< let me die, please>_

"Coulson," Skye says, and she's an anaesthetist in a mask, she's a machine in his brain, she's an angel appearing before him. "Coulson, you're chasing the RABIT. This is just a memory, Coulson, follow me back. Come back, Coulson, come back, come back, come back."

It's hard, it's so hard, to come out of that place. Is the blue the Drift? It's not. It is. It's the blue of a serum dispersing into his blood. It's the blue of alien thoughts drifting with his own. It's alien blue, tesseract blue, Cobalt Fury blue. It's the pure searing blue of a god's spear in his head.

"Coulson," Skye says, "Coulson," and her voice is thick with unshed tears.  _Pilot to pilot protocol disengaged_ , the system announces,  _would you like to try again_ , but Coulson can still  _feel_ her in his head.  _Let me die_ , he thinks, and she's got her hands on his face, cradling him gently, her tears wet against his skin.

 

+

 

That night, he lies in his own bed and can't sleep, feels Drift feedback buzzing against him until he can't tell where his own cotton sheet ends and Skye's scratchy wool blanket begins. It might be her bunk bed; it might be a bed from St Agnes twenty years ago, he can't tell. Time is confused in his brain. He closes his eyes and opens them expecting another body, closes them again, feels Skye breathe out.

The Drift connection's never been this strong for him. He's had ghost-drift before, dreams he and his drift partner have shared, emotions echoing across to each other, but this connection, across space, it's uncanny.

Around three, Skye pushes open his bunk door, crawls into his narrow bed, and the relief when she settles against him is enough that they both sigh with it. She tangles her limbs into his, presses her face into the hollow of his shoulder. The Drift feedback subsides; they feel like one body, shared minds. They sleep wound up in each other.

 

+

 

Coulson knows Skye wants to pilot, didn't need to drift with her to feel that, but she wants it so much, so hard, and he thinks, the base could use another jaeger. Fitz starts drawing up plans, and Coulson starts training with Skye, sparring that's just as much of a perfect dance between the two of them as he'd expected. Skye laughs with exhilaration every time she pins him, lets the atoms between them hum and buzz with tension, and he knows she can feel him feel it. She just fights harder, throws herself into it, anticipates his moves and rebounds into him anticipating her moves and laughs again when Coulson is tricked by Drift feedback, brushes Skye's hair out of his own eyes.

When they drift again for real, it's to settle into the vastness of Providence Lola, to lock their movements into her giant metal limbs, and where their last Drift was all pain and cold tears, this is heat, power, tension that makes Coulson feel more alive than he's been in years. "Oh," Skye says, "oh," and it echoes back  _< oh> <this is> <sunshine on her face the sky blue and limitless above her> <stepping into SHIELD receiving his badge becoming a pilot> <the taste of red cherry licorice>_

"Your neural bridge is holding strong," May says through LOCCENT, and of course it is, their neural handshake is steadfast. Coulson's seen Providence Lola from the ground. She's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.

 _< the most beautiful thing> _Skye echoes back, and then  _< heat> <the beat of your heart> _and Coulson feels what she's feeling.

They end the sequence, unstrap from the pilot harnesses, make eye contact and look away and make eye contact again. Things are bouncing between them, echoes that make Coulson's skin prickle with heat, and he gets flashes of Skye's mouth on his throat, his hands tangled in her hair, doesn't know whether that's coming from him, her, them both.

 _< oh_> Skye says again, and it's all they can do to hold themselves in check while Fitz and Simmons check all their post-Drift vitals physical and mechanical and metaphysical.

"You want-" he says, when they're done, and Skye grins sharp and knowing.

"Your bunk," she tells him, and yeah, she's slept there for so long now that his sheets smell like her shampoo, her cotton jumpsuits are hung in his closet, but that's all Driftplatonic contact soothing the buzzing edges of feedback and grief and post-death weirdness. This. This  _isn't_.

 

+

 

They slam into his bunk and Skye's already tugging at his Drift suit, pulling the collar open so she can mouth kisses hot and wet and sharp-edged with teeth down the line of his throat. The feeling slips into the drift memory slips into the feeling and Coulson can already feel the feedback building loud like static.

"Skye," he breathes, feels Skye hear him say it,  _< Skye> <Skye> <Skye>_, and she moans, presses closer to him, closes her mouth over his. He kisses her hard, unzips her suit, runs his fingers over the muscle and bone of her shoulders. Skye bites his lower lip, moans again in frustration and struggles out of her jacket, and god, Skye in her thin black singlet, sweat beading along her collarbone, he immediately gets flashes of every training session, every round of sparring.

"You were looking," Skye whispers,  _< in the gym> <you wanted> <you _wanted _> <I wanted>_, and yes, yes, Coulson wanted, Coulson  _wants_. Coulson's wanted for a long time. "Fuck," she hisses, "Phil, I want you so much," pulls off his jacket and his t-shirt and drags her nails down his chest, settles her fingers into the grooves of his hips, drags him in until his body is flush with hers up against the bunk door.

"Bed," he says, or thinks, or says, and  _< yeah, yes, bed, that, yes> _Skye thinks back, and somehow they get themselves the five steps across his bunk to his bed, shedding clothing along the way until suddenly Coulson is on his back with Skye straddling him, his arms held above his head, her fingers tight around his wrists. He arches into it, feels the heat of her skin pressed against his, and he doesn't realize but he fights against her grip because she pushes back harder, pins him the way she does in the sparring ring. It sparks another round of feedback and they're both breathing hard like they've fought twenty rounds already.

"Fuck," she says again, rubs slick and wet against him, and now it's Skye sliding into him sliding into Skye sliding into each other as if they're in the Drift. There's no seam between them, there's no horizon line where Skye ends and he begins and Skye begins and if this is what it's like every time, he understands other drift pilots a lot more now. He can feel Skye and he can  _feel_ Skye feeling what he's feeling what she's feeling. The feedback, the connection, feels like the room vibrating under them in their skin and in their bones.

"Oh god, Skye," he gasps into her mouth, and she rolls them, pulls him on top, grabs him white-knuckled. He can, she can, they can feel it like an earthquake about to break, and when it hits all they can do is hold on, shudder themselves out. Everything flares white and then blue and then white again and all Coulson can hear is Skye's voice in his head.

 _< Phil_> she whispers, soft, and breathes into a kiss, and when he brushes his hand in a long stroke down her back, she sighs with pleasure. "That," she says, swallows, gets her breath back. "That was."

"Was it okay?" he asks, suddenly unsure, and she laughs and laughs, presses her palm flat over his heart.

" _Phil_ , yes, god. I was going to say. That was  _the best_."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," she tells him. "Let's do it again."

They fall asleep, instead, wrapped up in each other even closer than usual, and when they wake, Coulson slides down between her legs, kisses up the inside of her thighs reverentially, presses his mouth against her wetness and licks long, slow strokes over her clit until Skye's writhing against him, so caught up in breathless gasps that she comes with a surprised shout.

 _< the most beautiful thing I've ever seen_> he thinks again, looking up at her naked body, the flush on her cheeks, and she closes her eyes, smiles, small, in a way that he knows means she's heard.

 

+

 

In Providence Lola they're unstoppable, and side by side with Deathlok Centipede, they start pushing back the battles. They start  _winning_.

"I brought you something," Skye says one day, very casual, and Coulson gets echoes of her pleasure at his surprise. 

The surprise is a packet of cherry Twizzlers, pre-war, and Coulson hasn't had sugar in so long that the first bite is overwhelming. 

"Oh my god," he says, "Oh my  _god_ ," and Skye grins, takes the other end of the licorice twist in her mouth, eats it like a strand of spaghetti until they're sharing a cartoon kiss that's sugar-sticky and cherry sweet. "You didn't get this off the black market, did you?" he asks her with mock sternness. Her grin just widens, and she plants another kiss on his lips. 

 _< you're welcome>_ she says, teasing and warm. 

 

+

 

"I did some research," Skye says, dragging her fingertips up the bare skin of his back. "On the Drift. What do you know about quantum entanglement?" 

"Particles interacting together?" Coulson says, a little uncertain, and Skye nods, presses a kiss to the curve of his shoulder, props herself up on one hand.

"They're entwined with each other in pairs. Affect one, you affect the other, instantly. Even across distance. Even across a universe. Einstein called it 'spooky action at a distance'. It's the Drift, Coulson."

"Is it?" he asks, brushing his fingers through her hair, and she reaches out, takes his hand, twines her fingers in his.

"Yeah," she says, "the Drift, it entangles us together. Takes our particles, mixes them up. When you separate them, move them apart, they're still connected. That's what I read," she tells him, "that's what I read in the Drift data, that's how I found Mike. Everything that happens to him, happens to Ace. Our particles are tangled together, Coulson. Everything that happens to you happens to me. Maybe not physically, but in our memory. We feel it all. We drift inside each other."

 

+

 

There's an attack on DC that nobody sees coming, because it's not an alien attack, it's another jaeger, impossible as it is. Captain America's on the ground, fighting a jaeger that Coulson thinks can't,  _can't_ be Winter Soldier. Winter Soldier doesn't exist (but it is, it  _is_ , and he doesn't know what that means).

He's not expecting an attack from both sides. When Skye goes down, he  _feels_  it, the echo down their connection, and it's a punch that leaves him winded and gasping, dizzy and sick to the stomach with echoed pain.  _We feel it all_ , he thinks, and his heart clutches with fear.

"Oh god," he says, and doesn't even realize he's saying it. "Oh god, Skye,  _Skye_ , god, no, hold on."  _< help>_ she says, faint,  _< help> _and he's running, running, trying to find her before the feedback dies.

He finds her limp and pale against a wall in the jaeger hangar, picks her up and carries her to the medbay. "Save her," he tells Jemma, "just, save her, Simmons, you have to-"

"She's not-" Jemma says, her hands fluttering. "Sir, I can't-"

There's one way to save her, Coulson knows suddenly and with certainty, and he's desperate enough that it's an option.

"You have the Kree brain you've been taking samples from," he says. "And the Drift compatibility serum you've been working on."

"The Drift has been known to repair small levels of neural misconnection, but this is  _far_ beyond that, sir," Jemma argues, and Coulson grits his jaw.

"Jemma," he says quietly. "Do it."

The DC-325 is ice-blue, and the Kree brain doesn't even look human (it's not, it's  _not_ human, that's the point, Coulson thinks) and Jemma hesitates before she pushes the neural spike in. "This is the only brain sample I have," she says, "if it doesn't work..."

"It'll work," Coulson tells her, because it has to work.

He feels it, the Drift, when Simmons initiates the link. There are no LOCCENT controls here, no calm female voice telling them,  _pilot to pilot protocol initiated_. It's just stars, and the vast coldness of space, and when Skye's body goes rigid, when her brain starts knitting itself back together, he feels it all.

This happened to him. This he knows. He's got an alien consciousness in his brain, or traces of one, and now Skye does too. The three of them are linked together, and he can feel her pain, and it's  _different_ , somehow. He grabs her hand, tries to ride it out, but he can't remember how he came back the first time, can't remember how to bring her back.

_< it's an eternity>_

_< it's alien symbols carving into his skin is this Skye's memory> <no> <is this his memory> <no> <maybe> <no> <is this the Kree> <could be> <the Kree is him> <the Kree is them>_

Skye's  _different_ , he feels it again, and her back arches, her breath stutters, her nose is bleeding, and when he wipes his own face his fingers come away bloody.

She comes back, clawing her way out of the frost of deep space, and he knows, she knows, that the way her body reacted to the Kree drift, it's different. It's inhuman.

 

+

 

It's difficult to understand, even with the connection of the Drift, what happened to Skye before Coulson found her. They lie together in his bunk,  _their_ bunk, skin pressed to skin, and Skye tells him between heartbeats.

"Ward is Hydra," she says, and it echoes between them,  _< Ward is Hydra> <Ward is Hydra>._ Hydra's a bad folktale, a rumor that floats in the Drift. Hydra is chaos, Drift pilots turning on each other, jaegers tearing themselves apart and rebuilding as terrifying ghosts. Hydra is the Winter Soldier. Hydra's jaeger-tech urban legend. _  
_

Hydra is  _real_ , Coulson realizes, and he doesn't know what their end goal is, and Hydra had Skye, and he needs to clutch her closer now, needs to stroke her hair, to breathe her in.

"Ward and Garrett, they... Garrett was damaged by neural misconnection. Like you."  _< like me>_, Coulson hears, and he doesn't know whether it's him or her or them both. "Ward knew I knew how they'd saved you. How they'd brought you back. He knew I'd drifted with you. I wouldn't tell him. He tried."  _< he tried to Drift with me>_, she says, and Coulson gets echoes of that, of the sick shock of someone else in her head. "We're not compatible. The misconnection. It. It hurt us both. He pulled back in time for Garrett to put him in Deathlok Centipede, to Drift with him and repair the damage. They left me behind."

 _< but why>_, Coulson thinks, because he's baffled.

"Garrett calls himself the Clairvoyant. He's... Phil, you ever hear of that cult who worship the invasion?" He has, of course he has, but surely Garrett's not caught up in religious mania. Skye shakes her head, impatient.

 _< not like that like this> _she says, and he understands. Hydra isn't just chaos. Hydra is  _order_ , order through violence, a world where only the strong survive. Hydra wants to burn everything down and rise from the ashes.

"I left something behind," Skye says eventually, smiles very slow. "In Deathlok Centipede. A surprise for them. A Trojan horse. My particles tangled up in the Drift. It'll disable the jaeger when it activates."

"Spooky action at a distance," Coulson replies, and Skye smiles wider.

"Yeah," she agrees. "Just like that."

 

+ 

 

Deathlok Centipede deactivates but it's still gone, and Skye looks at the space where the jaeger should stand with something that feels like regret.

A new jaeger joins the team, reassigned to fill the gap, and Coulson can't help but watch Skye when she sees Iliad Mockingbird. It's SHIELD's biggest jaeger, a deadly fighting machine, and Coulson smiles when the team steps into base. "Agents Morse and Mackenzie," he says, half introduction and half greeting, "best jaeger pilots on the Eastern seaboard, it's good to have you on the team."

"Glad to be here, sir," Bobbi Morse says, bumps her shoulder against her partner's. "Right, Mack?"

"Right," Mack agrees. "No chance you'll reassign me to the workroom, sir? Looks like you've got a bunch of tech you could use a mechanic on."

"You could multitask," Coulson suggests, "I get that you're good with tech, and you're not wrong, we could use your help to rebuild a new Deathlok Centipede, but we need you in the pilot seat, Mack."

"Yeah, I hear you," Mack laughs. "Where's Hunter? Already fiddling with the LOCCENT controls?"

"Setting up a clandestine brewery under the LOCCENT controls, more likely," Bobbi says, tosses glorious blonde curls, and Coulson feels Skye's admiration. She watches Bobbi and Mack and Hunter all the way through dinner, accepts a mug of home-brewed beer from Hunter (clandestine brewery for real, Coulson thinks, but that doesn't stop him drinking a beer too, enjoying the buzz).

"So," Hunter says, rocking back in his chair. "You're Providence Lola."

"And you're mission control for Iliad Mockingbird," Skye replies, raises an eyebrow. "Where are you going with this?"

"Never mind," Hunter says, looks sideways at Mack and Bobbi and sips his beer very nonchalantly, and Coulson recognizes the expression of someone who's sharing ghost-drift echoes. Skye narrows her eyes, and of course she's picked up on it too, because she's in his brain.

"Wait," she says, "you...  _oh_ ," and Hunter smirks.

"Just checking," he says, "that we're all on the same team here."

Fitz clears his throat. "Yeah, we're all on team drift compatible here," he tells them, "we passed the test back at the Academy, right Simmons?"

" _Fitz_ ," Jemma says, blushing, " _no_ , that's not..." and Skye hides a grin, pours herself another beer, settles more comfortably against Coulson. Her back is warm against his chest, and she's sending him regular echoes  _< Skye kissing his cheek> <Skye's mouth on his jaw> <his hands in her hair>_, and he wonders when he stopped caring about  _professional_ and just started caring about Skye.

 

+

 

Every Drift, Skye tries to figure out a little more about her family. It's hard, it's almost impossible. Her family disappeared when she was just a baby, this much he knows (this much she knows). She pushes far, far back, but there's only a few fragments left in the Drift.

_< a familiar song, a song he knows> <a song she knows> <a song that feels like home>_

She dreams of it, and the song winds into Coulson's dreams too, a lullaby that ghosts between the two of them.

"It's frustrating," she whispers, her voice thick with sleep. "I just want to know  _more_."

"It'll come," Coulson tells her, brushes a kiss over her knuckles. "You'll remember."

 _< I will always love you, Daisy> _they hear, the next Drift, and it's clear and strong and solid, enough that Skye staggers with it.

"Do you want to change your name?" Coulson asks, and Skye shrugs.  _< maybe> <I don't> <I do>_

 _< Daisy> _he says, experimental, and she smiles, leans into him.

 

+

 

Fitz and Mack rebuild Deathlok Centipede, and when Ace asks, a little shy, if they can choose a new name, Skye  _< Daisy> <Skye> _ smiles wide, pushes back her shorter hair, touches the strands of blue framing her face. She understands renaming, she understands identity, and with Daisy echoing it back to him, Coulson feels like maybe he understands it too. With Iliad Mockingbird and Team Spirit and Providence Lola, the secret Shatterdome is SHIELD's last, best line of defense.

Coulson doesn't expect the end to come so soon, or for it to arrive in sharp blue crystals that glow as bright as the Drift.

 _< what is it> _Daisy thinks when they see the newest weapon of the invasion. It looks simple enough, a tall metal obelisk flowering open to reveal crystal shards, and why, why is it  _< alien symbols carving into his skin> <oh> <oh that> _They pause, step back, consider their next move.

"It's a Kree weapon," Daisy says, "Phil, we have to-" and yeah, she's right. "In a jaeger we're okay, right?"

Right. Coulson reaches out, grabs a crystal in giant metal fingers, and no, no they're not safe, they're not safe at all. The crystal shorts out his arm, freezes his fingers until they're useless, and the pain is sharp and cold like a knife. He struggles to drop it, can't drop it  _< can't drop it> <oh god oh god Daisy> <Phil no> <Phil no> _

 _Pilot out of alignment_ , the AI announces dispassionately, and this has happened before, this is how he died.

Everything's blue, everything's black, Coulson's brain is misfiring, all he can feel is echoes of panic from Skye  _< Daisy_> and then a sudden, sick shock as Iliad Mockingbird slices through the metal arm of the jaeger.

"I'll get you back to base," Daisy says, "Coulson, stay with me, I'll get you back," and he doesn't remember the rest until the AI wakes him,  _p_ _ilot to pilot protocol disengaged_ , and Daisy's pulling him out of the harness, tugging off his helmet, touching his feedback-ruined hand with such gentle fingers.

They get to the medbay and everything fades out, everything soft at the edges from the morphine, and he thinks he's never seen anything more beautiful than Daisy's face right in this moment. "Phil," she says, kisses the corner of his mouth. She's crying. Why is she crying. "I have to," she says, "we don't know what that Kree weapon will do, I can't let them hurt any more people, Coulson, I'll make this right." 

"No," he says, "Skye, don't go," but she's already making the drop.

She won't handle the neural load alone.

She does.

 

+

 

The jaeger - Daisy in battle - the jaeger and Daisy are officially code-named Secret Warrior. There are no files on them in the system. Coulson waits in the LOCCENT controls, gets echoes of Drift feeding back from her even still. It's impossible to separate Daisy from her code name. She's a secret warrior fierce and strong and determined. 

In the halls of the Shatterdome, he hears people call the secret jaeger a different name. 

 _Quake_ , they whisper, and when Daisy hears it through Coulson's ears, he feels her laugh.

"You hear that?" she says, when he sees her next, buckled into her Drift suit for a mission. "Hey, Phil, I'm a superhero."

 _< you always were>_ he tells her, and she grins, takes the drop into the jaeger control, and as she leaves the base in a body built of steel, Coulson feels the floor tremble and vibrate under his feet. 

 _< our particles are tangled together in the Drift> _Daisy says, echoes of her fingers on his skin.  _< even across distance> <even across a universe> _and Coulson doesn't pilot anymore, but he and Daisy, they're in the Drift.

**Author's Note:**

> as with everything, this is thanks to tumblr and their enabling


End file.
